I think I may have answered my own question.  I just checked
the distributed items via
s * in listname from 1/12/5

and it shows 67 items distributed.  Of course, there were far more
than that as the search looks only for items with the 1/12/5 date and
the were many items date of 1/12/3 and 1/12/4 (had a bit of a problem,
late distribution of some items).  The 67 items is a lie, therefor,
in my sense, but it will serve.

The treshold for the list is 65.  There have been 67 items distributed
with the date of 1/12/5 plus many uncounted with other dates.  I have
twice today placed the list on hold to reset in order to edit the list
digest and then freed the list.  I therefore assume that the act of
manually HOLDing and then FREEing the list resets the counter for the
purposes of the daily threshold.

Is this correct?

Whether it is or not, it is what I will proceed on for now.   Douglas